ou," Peignton replied, truthfully
enough. He had been wondering how the deuce a woman like that had come
to marry Bernard Raynor!

Teresa played a good steady game, and forbore to chatter, a fact duly
appreciated by her host. Cassandra was alternately brilliant and
careless. At times looking across the table Peignton could see her eyes
grow absent and misty, and suspected thoughts far removed from the play.
Then he would wait with anticipated pleasure the deprecatory grimace,
the penitent, appealing glance.

At seven o'clock Miss Mallison's carriage was announced, and Teresa
exhibited a dutiful daughter's unwillingness "to keep the horse
waiting." In the great hall she slid her arms into a Burberry coat,
pulled a knitted cap over her head, and passing out of the porch sprang
lightly to the front seat of a shabby dog-cart. The coachman, shabby to
match, stood at the horse's head, and as Peignton took his place, looked
on with an impenetrability which denoted that this was not the first
time he had been superseded. Then he in his turn climbed to a back
seat, and the horse trotted off down the dark avenue.

Teresa had looked forward with keenest anticipation to this moment when
she and Dane would sit quietly together in the friendly dark. There was
no expectation of love-making in her mind, far less of a formal
declaration; she was content just to sit by his side, and leaning back
in her seat be able to gaze her fill at the strong, dark form. On a
previous occasion he had given her the reins to hold while he lit a
cigarette, and the picture of his face illumined by the tiny flame of
the match would remain for life in her mental gallery. She hoped he
would light a cigarette to-night.

If the inchoate thoughts of the girl's mind could have been translated
into words at that moment, they would have made a poem, but Teresa had
not the gift of expression. She asked herself several times what she
should "talk about," before at last she broke the silence.

"You see it _did_ pay to discard from strength!"

Peignton laughed. The point had been disputed between the two times and
again, but he felt an amused admiration of the manner in which the girl
held to her point. To-night his remembrance of the game was hazy, but
Teresa as the victor was entitled to complaisance.

"You played rattling well. You always do. I never knew a woman less
miserly of trumps. Do you know Lady Cassandra well?"

"I--think so!" Doub